"'Sir—no more. Here I cannot listen to explanations. I might place a guard over you, but nevertheless consider yourself a prisoner, and believe that any attempt to escape will be deemed but a proof of guilt. Retain your sword—partake of our hospitality; and I hope, señor, that the morrow will find you prepared to refute these dark charges.'
"He waved his hand with such an air as a Castilian noble could alone assume, and with a lofty gait strode away: then in his daughter, who swept on by his side, for the first time I recognised the young lady I had rescued at La Guardia, the original of the portrait Darby had found, and which at that moment I had upon my person.
"Her large dark eyes dilated with astonishment, and then sparkled with the recognition, which the punctilio of the place or her father's pride and severity, together with my tatterdemalion aspect, prevented her avowing; and thus, though I had saved her life—yea, more than her life—at the risk of my own, this dazzling creature passed away and left me, without a word of thanks or courtesy.
"I do not remember that I felt either the alarm, horror, or astonishment that might be supposed consequent to an accusation so startling as murder and marauding. I can only account for this by the deadness of feeling and of all sense of danger which results from actual service and warfare. But there was one emotion which I felt deeply—an angry pride; aware that I was an object of aversion and suspicion to the gay guests of the Marquis, among whom the fat and ferocious little town-major made himself very conspicuous in laying down the Spanish military law on the enormities I had committed. The hidalgos gazed at me indignantly through their eye-glasses; the dark-eyed donnas peeped timidly through the openings of their veils, and 'matador, borrachio, Inglese ladrone,' were the gentlest of the epithets I heard muttered by many a pretty lip. My heart swelled with rage, and instead of joining the dancers, or aiding in the onslaught made upon the viands which covered the long tables of an adjoining saloon, between lofty epergnes and vases of crystal and silver, filled with summer flowers, I stood aloof with folded arms, and felt the smarting of a wound received but a few months before—and that wound was received for Spain, and on Spanish ground!
"At a little distance I saw the Donna Estella whispering to her father's aide-de-camp. A minute afterwards he approached me.
"'Señor,' said he, 'if you will pardon the advice of a friend, I beseech you to retire to your quarters, for all here view you with hostile eyes; and, as a brave soldier, to whom my little cousin owes (as she has told me) her life, I cannot afford to see you thus misused. To-morrow, I hope, will see these clouds dispelled; meantime, allow me to accompany you. I have here a spare apartment, to which you are welcome.'
"All places were alike to me; I accepted his offer with gratitude; and, as we descended to the vestibule, the first person I met was honest Darby Crogan, with his sword under his arm, and his keen grey Irish eyes sparkling with rage; and he pushed the laced lacqueys right and left.
"'I have heard it all, sir,' said the brave fellow, who had been anxious about me; 'and mighty hard it will go wid you. It was all the doin' of that capthin of the Chaseers Britaneeks, who came out of his own route into ours, ransacked La Guardia, and carried off the mules (bad cess to them!). They were found with us, and the owner is ready to swear by this and by that, and by everything else, that you are the man, and these are his mules, as he knows by the holes punched in their ears, and to these holes he is as ready to swear as to his own two eyes.'
"'True, Darby; but how is all this to be explained to these hostile and obstinate Spaniards?'
"'Kape your mind aisy, sir; there are four good hours till daybreak yet, and if I don't astonish them thaving Dons, I am not Darby Crogan of the 4th Dragoon Guards.'